The Black Mesa Website now offers a timer, counting down to a September 14th release of this modification that will update the gameplay from Half-Life with the Source engine from Half-Life 2. This project has taken more development time than the gap between the first two Half-Life games, which earned it "vaporware awards" from the impatient pundits at Wired in 2009 and 2010, but it seems this long wait is about to come to an end. Here's word from the forums:

We're freaking out over here! It is so exciting to share this news with you!

You can now Download the Black Mesa Soundtrack, courtesy of our very own Joel Nielsen, at the very generous price of whatever you want! Enjoy and share!

In the near future you'll see our Website, Wiki and Forums all taken down temporarily for renovations.

On September 14th you will see the first release of Black Mesa! This will include our re-envisioning of Half-Life all the way up to Lambda Core. We believe this is a great way to provide a complete-feeling 8-10 hour experience with a solid ending, make our fans happy and help us make the best overall game possible.

We are still working hard on Xen and BMDM, but instead of making you wait we are giving you Black Mesa as soon as it's ready! We're doing our best to help bring the immense vision of this project into reality, and we are very excited for what the future brings!

Before you say anything make sure you have permission from our white-knighting apologist.

'Everyone' is right. You're coming across like a spoiled child when you have zero right to complain.

And nin wasn't apologising for them, he was just calling you out for being a douchebag. Don't like that it took that long or a bunch of volunteers didn't meet the deadline they set themselves, fine, don't play it or support them. But you're kidding yourself if you think they owe you anything...

Prez wrote on Sep 2, 2012, 17:09:Like others I have long since lost interest in this project, but as one who has proclaimed publicly that this project was vaporware and would never be released I guess now it's time to admit publicly I was wrong. I may try it one day when its complete if the commmunity says it's worth it, but credit to the team I guess for actually sticking with it after all this time and releasing something.

After eight years, I doubt anyone still remembering it didn't have it at least partially filed under vaporware.

Anyways, I'd be hard pressed to think of a game I'm more nostalgic about than HL1, and where HL:Source was basically just a minimal-effort conversion of the HL1 maps, Black Mesa Source was truly ambitious. It looked amazing back when the initial batch of media was released, and I remember checking the site for updates on a weekly basis back in the day. Of course, I no longer remember enough of the game's original levels and assets to truly appreciate the redesign/improvements they might have done for certain areas, but it should be a fun trip down memory lane none the less.

Oh, and the lack of Xen levels doesn't bother me at all. That was never an enjoyable part of the original game for me, Surface Tension's where it was at!

Riker wrote on Sep 2, 2012, 16:42:I'm still kinda shocked Valve didn't buy them up and release all official-like. A quality re-make would sell buckets.

That is what I've always attributed the massive delay to. I have to admit I am stunned that this wasn't the case and it's being released free.

Like others I have long since lost interest in this project, but as one who has proclaimed publicly that this project was vaporware and would never be released I guess now it's time to admit publicly I was wrong. I may try it one day when its complete if the commmunity says it's worth it, but credit to the team I guess for actually sticking with it after all this time and releasing something.

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” - Mahatma Gandhi

Having worked on a mod that wasn't finished I understand how things just take forever with these things. You have people who aren't being paid work on something after hours while juggling real life. Their interest in the project often wanes.

The issue is when you make promises too early to the community. There's an ego component. In my own experience I tried to get the mod members to create at least an alpha of what we intended to do prior to announcing it. Of course everyone got ahead of themselves, hyped it and found themselves besieged by demands from an understandably eager community. Somewhere a long the way development of the mod just faded out leaving a lot of annoyed community members. You kind of have to expect this sort of behavior from the community. I don't think the complaining is justified, it's just the way people behave and can be expected.

Beamer wrote on Sep 2, 2012, 13:58:Unless you preordered this for $60 on what are now broken promises... shut up about "apologists." It's a term that, especially when being used for a free mod, makes any user sound like an idiot.

Holy shit, I agree with Beamer on something!

Shut the fuck up, tool. Wait, I take that back. You don't sound like a tool, you sound like the whole shed. Take your faux outrage and do something meaningful with your life.

How are they going to distribute this? Some source mods you can download directly from Steam where others have to be downloaded and installed to the sourcemods dir. I hope Valve lets them put this up on Steam, otherwise the download speeds for the first several days will suck.

"White-knighting" is another term no rational human being ever uses, and it's suddenly become pretty popular on this board. In that it's being used maybe once a week, but that's definitely more than acceptable.

Beelzebud wrote on Sep 2, 2012, 13:44:So people whine about not getting a free project "on time", so they give people something play and get crap for "rushing" things.

You can't win with this mentality. It's a free mod made by people in their spare time. If you feel butt-hurt over it, don't play it! They owe you nothing.

If you actually took the time to read you'd notice most people stopped caring how long it took for them to complete the mod and only want something that is finished after eight years of work. Episodic releases are only pandering to the impatient. It shows a loss of interest to get things done. Unless it's brilliant and receives glowingly positive feedback, this will be a morality killer for the team. And then it will never be finished.

What do you think he's apologizing for?You've literally lost nothing with this game, and all the people that made it are asking for is your time, which they're pretty open about it not being complete so that you can judge whether it gets your time accordingly.

Unless you preordered this for $60 on what are now broken promises... shut up about "apologists." It's a term that, especially when being used for a free mod, makes any user sound like an idiot.

Pigs must be flying outside because I 100% agree with Beamer here. It's free, they could take 100 years and deliver a shitty product afterwards, it's free and it has cost you or anyone else absolutely nothing but wasting some time. When money is involved, yes, these kind of practices would be shameful to say the least but it's a free effort and as such nothing is lost, at worst something is gained for nothing. If the mod is good, fine, it's something for people to play. If the mod is bad, well, nothing was lost but a couple of hours at most.

Mad Max RW wrote on Sep 2, 2012, 14:05:It doesn't matter if it's free or you paid $60. The fact is they couldn't keep any of their promises. I hold people to their word, and when someone can't live up to it multiple times that doesn't bode well. If the thing is great, fine, none of it matters. But taking the tired old white-knighting stance of "Oh, it's free and they don't owe you anything" is apologizing for their inabilities. I've never seen this end well. Maybe Black Mesa will be the first, and that would be a great thing.

This isn't anything anyone needs to "apologize" over, or get worked up over what he perceives as apologies.

You have no vested interest in this. You have no skin in this game, so to speak. If this sucks you can do what 99.99% of gamers will do and totally ignore it. You've been free to do that forever, since it became obvious it was unlikely to be anything special (say, about 8 years ago.)

You seem to be the only person that cares enough to apologize or otherwise. Some people made a mod in their spare time. It's not finished. It may suck. Story over.